Hacker Cinema
Adam
1983 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Michael Tuchner
Based on the true story that shocked the nation and led to vast changes in how law enforcement handled missing children cases...John and Reve Walsh deal with their grief in front of the whole country when their son, Adam, is abducted and later found dead.
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2 comments on Hacker News
My parents were paranoid about kidnappings. It was like perfect social engineering on my parents' generation with TV movies like Adam - the story of John Walsh's son who was kidnapped and beheaded:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085136/
My parents had me and my siblings watch that movie with them - it is still unsettling to me thinking about it.
And then the FBI contacted my school and provided a voluntary program for parents to have their children fingerprinted. From my memory 95%+ of kids all lined up in my school and got fingerprinted to "protect them from kidnapping".
It honestly seems surreal - looking back it sure seems like a black ops campaign to get biometric data on a large portion of the U.S. youth population.
The article notes that it's usually women that drop out of the workforce to stay home with the kids, but it doesn't mention that it's usually women who are the ones being paranoid about unsupervised children. 30 years ago, I think it was the total opposite. My mother (and many others) were fine with the kids coming home by themselves and being latchkey kids.
what changed? "Adam" in 1983. I noticed a significant shift in parental behavior after that movie came out. My mother declared that I was no longer allowed to walk home alone after school. Talking with other friends later on in life, they too noted that things changed in the early 80's. One cited the rise of AIDS as a reason his mother wouldn't let him walk home. Another cited the McMartin preschool trial. The fear of random people snatching up and molesting/murdering kids became endemic. Fear had taken over.